BBQ

Warm Lentil Salad: a BBQ leftovers recipe hack

My favorite part about the Austin barbecue experience is over ordering. When you order meats by the pound, a quarter pound sounds kinda minuscule right? And a pound of brisket per person is clearly reasonable. It is that kind of thinking that brings butcher wrapped leftovers to my fridge. Don’t weep too hard for me.

Now one can easily reheat that barbecue in a cast iron skillet or low and slow in an oven. But here is a better idea: Leftover BBQ healthy hack recipes. Sounds far fetched? Well, keep this number in mind: 251 calories.

That is how many calories are in a single serving of this warm lentil salad made with leftover coarse ground sausage link from Micklethwait BBQ, one of the best barbecue joints in Austin, which means pretty much anywhere.

It often starts in a backyard where a Dad dumps lighter fluid over a pyramid of charcoal briquettes. Hotdogs stand at the ready to be charred. You inevitably eat outside. For a moment, the modern suburban American is somehow a little more connected to nature and the primal beginnings of human civilization. Eating around the fire is both ancient ritual and modern day American food tradition. In either case, while the scenario is fun, eating well from fire is often an art best left to the experts. Enter American Barbecue, the Central Texas smoked meat tradition, and our current food renaissance’s obsession with the pit master obsessed with brisket. There is just nothing quite like it. Sure, Memphis fanatics will talk up the supremacy of sugar rubbed ribs and Carolina pulled pork enthusiasts will mock anything that isn’t porcine focused but man who doesn’t love beef in America? Further, who doesn’t love the pure satisfaction of beef kissed with smoke, salt and pepper? There is plenty of room on my table for all kinds of Barbecue and not just our domestic fare either, but I happily now count myself among the ranks of the brisket obsessed and I can thank living in Austin for that. There has been a renaissance, wait I used that word already, well F*** it, it is what it is, there has been a Renaissance in Central Texas Barbecue that has stretched out as far west as Compton CA and as far east as the Big Apple. But today we will focus on Central Texas Brisket found right here in Central Texas. So here we go – 5 Austin picks where you will find some Bang for your Brisket Buck.